Reading Romans 1 on homosexuality in the light of Biblical/Jewish and Greco-Roman perspectives of its time

Abstract

In seeking common ground with his readers Paul uses same sex relations to depict human depravity. In doing so he uses many of the arguments familiar from ethical discourse in the Greco-Roman world of his time, but employs them within a Jewish frame of reference. Thus the perverted mind, attitudes and actions are produced by perverted responses to God. The shame of making males passive is ultimately the shame of contravening what God created them to be. Exceptionally he relates the unnatural not to denying procreation, but to denying the created order of (only) male and female and implies the Leviticus prohibitions apply to both. Strong passion is problematic when wrongly directed. Paul’s argument is typically theological and psychological.